Yealink (News - Alert) UK’s managing director, Andrew Roberts, credits the generally poor European economy’s performance-price ratios with how difficult it is to get telecoms and IT managers to commit to new capital expenditure.

In fact, Robert says, these days projects which were essentially rubber-stamped with little debate a few years ago now merit evaluation and scrutiny. As he says, even issues such as longstanding brand loyalty are coming under the green eyeshade exam -- “We’re paying more for this service why, exactly?” is heard far more frequently now.

As Roberts said recently, they’re looking to see if a big brand name really does add value or if they’re perhaps instead simply paying for a costly marketing and operational overhead.

Is brand recognition worth, say, a 100 percent markup over competing product or service? Maybe. That conversation is happening more and more these days. “Worryingly the effect premium pricing might have in the current climate could be to deter them from investing at all right now, thus denying resellers vital opportunities,” Yealink officials fear.

In fact, officials of IP phone maker Yealink, which sells IP telephones and videophones for the worldwide broadband telephony market say, “This is no theoretical debate. It’s reality. Make no mistake; people are aware of unified communication’s benefits. They want rich presence. They want fully integrated, end-to-end communication solutions embracing IM, SMS, email and so on. They want HD videoconferencing. They want it all – but they want it at an affordable price.”

Yealink can be forgiven for thinking they’ve hit on the right formula, launching in 2009, a rather inauspicious debut environment, “we have bucked the gloom-laden trend to double our sales every six months. By May this year we had already surpassed our total sales volumes for 2011,” company officials say, adding that “a number of leading carriers have bought into our proposition and are now specifying our kit.”

They say they’ve managed to break into brand loyalty-protected relationships because they have low operating costs, a tightly focused range which we can sell in volume and high reliability, which is a compelling value proposition.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO East 2012, taking place Jan. 31-Feb. 3 2012, in Miami, FL. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. For more information on registering for ITEXPO registration click here.

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